A Jewish Fistfighter in Panem
by McJunker
Summary: A jewish kid from the mean streets of District 3 is chosen for the 71st Hunger Games. He'll do anything to go home again.
1. Chapter 1

I had my bar mitzvah three years ago. Only about 70 of us in District Three still observe the old ways, so it was a low turnout. Our numbers depress a lot of the old folk, but it's for the best. Overt religious holidays are dangerous in Panem.

I got up in front of my family and our neighbors, my friends and relatives, and I told them that I was a man. I called a blessing over the weekly reading, and recited a long passage that I had memorized by rote in the old tongue. Only four men among us actually understood it, all of them old enough to remember the days before the Capitol's rise to power. A man caught speaking it might disappear, and we depend on them for access to the Torah.

For the rest of us, we are taught to read and write, to think and debate. They told us that the Capitol schooling we received was good enough to learn a trade, but that it would turn us stupid if we took it to heart.

We're told that we are marked by G-d, so we must abstain from pork and bacon, and turkey too; we must not do anything on Saturdays; we must give all we can to keep the poorest among us alive; we must obey the commandments; we must celebrate holidays on random days of the year.

I once asked my uncle Jeremee why we did all this weird stuff when no one else did. My mom had shut me down when I wanted to go fishing down by the flood control on a Saturday, and I was pissed. He told me that if we stopped these rituals, we would stop being the people of G-d, and we'd become indistinguishable from the gentiles around us. He said that we have a higher purpose, and that to break these traditions or ignore our past would end us. I asked him what that purpose was, and he said if I studied harder I'd already know.

Anyway, for my bar mitzvah my mother gave me a green knitted sweater; my sister Ariel gave me a note pad and home-sharpened pencils; my friend Jon gave me a cheap set of brass knuckles. My father died before my mother gave birth to me, so my uncle gave me a pocket version of the Talmud to study from.

I loved my family, but I got the most use out of the knuckles.

I guess I was a bit of a problem child.

* * *

My first fight, at age six, was over a girl. Jon and I both liked the same girl in our class, and we argued over who she liked better. I gave him a split lip and he tore my shirt.

When I went home that day, my mom read me the riot act. Money was tight, and we hadn't budgeted for new clothes this month. The only other solution was to sew the rip, and she hated sending her son out in public in shabby clothes. I took my tongue lashing in silence and plotted my next move.

The next day at recess, Jon and I tore into each other immediately. I found out later that we had both made the same plan, to ambush the other by pretending to apologize. Soon, a nice big ring of gentile kids surrounded us, screaming "Hunger Game! Hunger Game!" Jon and I ignored them and focused on hitting and shoving each other into the ground. This time, I broke my nose falling on the asphalt and I gave Jon two black eyes and some impressive bruises on his cheeks and arms. We called truce after that and have been hanging together ever since. I can't remember what the girl's name was.

My next major fight was against the rich kids when I was eight. They were well-dressed, fat, and arrogant. They thought me and Jon were a couple of animals in our hand-me-down pants and cheap, split shoes. They also outnumbered us five to two. They sought us out after school one day and picked a fight. The seven of us brawled out of sight of the teachers, underneath the bleachers overlooking the greenfield where the rich kids could play soccer and football. We lost, of course. But they went home to their parents with broken teeth and blood all over their fine clothes, so Jon and I called it a victory.

It wasn't. Soon after, Jon's brother was fired at the plant and my mom's merchant license was suspended. We learned not to cross the rich kids again.

One year before my bar mitzvah, Jon and I started a gang of Jewish kids, and we would brawl with the gentile kids in the surrounding blocks. We would fight over who could hang out where on our filthy, crummy little neighborhood- we were too young to fight over who could sell contraband on what street corner. We were all dimly aware that that was where we'd likely end up when we were adults.

I started wearing black and brown clothes, so that the blood stains wouldn't upset off my mom so much.

* * *

When I was fourteen, I may or may not have broken one of the commandments. Uncle Jeremee says in English the Lord's commandment goes, "You shall not steal," but in the old tongue it meant something more like, "You shall not kidnap." As long as this confusion persists, I don't know if my burglary counts or not, because I know I didn't kidnap anybody.

Jon and I picked the house because it looked ornate enough that the tenants probably had something worth taking, but ratty enough that they probably didn't have anything to keep thieves out. I broke the back window and crawled through it wearing rags over my hands while Jon kept lookout. I still cut my legs up pretty good, but I didn't get any blood on the carpets. I opened the door from within and let him in. It was the most thrilling experience of my life, sneaking around in some one else's home. I could hear my heartbeat every second I was in there, positive that Peacemakers would show up and surround the house, that someone would come out from behind the bookcase with a baseball bat, or something. But nothing happened to us. Not that time, anyway.

We grabbed pillowcases to use as swag bags, then stuffed them full of anything we could find that looked worthwhile. We grabbed stale bread from the kitchen cupboards; Jon found a silver bracelet in the living room; I stole some good quality pairs of shoes from the bedroom closet. And so on. There was a lot of random clutter lying around that was valuable to the right people. Toilet paper, rings, books, pencils, silverware, etc. The pillows would also have fetched something, but ironically we couldn't take them because they took up too much room in the pillowcase

We ate the bread, sold most of the random stuff to a gentile fence named Henderson, and gave the shoes out to our families. I remember Mom was furious about how I'd gotten them. I remember her saying, "Where did you get the money for these, huh? Or did you steal them? Did I raise a thief?" She was crying. I remember thinking that she was trying to guilt trip me.

I said, "Who cares? Do you just want to have Ariel's feet get all cut up, or not? Don't you even care about what happens to her?"

Hypocrisy. Sheer hypocrisy on my part, looking back. I remember when it clicked into place in my mind, that questioning her love of Ariel would both unnerve and hurt her. So like a thoughtless little savage, I tore her heart up to win an argument.

We spent the next two hours screaming at each other while my sister cried in her room, and it wasn't the last time, either But the important thing is that in the end, she took the shoes. And a few weeks later, she took 25 copper coins. And a few weeks later, she took a fine new comb too. But she cried a little each time.

I don't want to say how noble I am, or anything. Of all my ill-gotten gains, she only saw a tenth of it. I figured if a ten percent tithe is good enough for the Lord, it should be good enough for her.

I spent the profits on drugs and alcohol, mostly. Henderson also ran a decent still, and I guess self-control wasn't a strong point of mine.

* * *

It was impossible, there had to be half a million kids up for the spinner, and the cold, judging finger of the Lord still landed on me. I went cold when my name was called out, chills streaking down my spine.

I turned and gaped at Jon, and he gaped right back.

"That wasn't my name," I said to him. "It couldn't have been me." And it wasn't. It couldn't have been. Half a million kids...

It wasn't until the Peacemakers grabbed me and dragged me up toward the cameras by my upper arms that it sank in- I was going to die, and for the life of me I couldn't figure out how this had happened.

I walked up to the stage and waved and smiled blankly and wondered how my name had turned up.

* * *

The crowd was applauding wildly, screaming and hollering. A bunch of whooping, chattering monkeys, to me.

I had green hair now, dyed like some teenybopper rich kid. My skin tone was about five shades paler than was natural. A glaring yellow shirt that was poofy at the chest and tight on the arms, knee high white boots, and sheer black silk pants completed the ensemble. My stylist had better pray that I don't win, because if I do I'll hunt him down and beat him to within an inch of his life.

Caesar Flickerman's voice boomed across the studio. "And now, the boy from District Three, David Shalum!"

I slapped a cocky smile on my face and step up towards the chair by Caesar Flickerman. I stopped my walk and cocked my head. I popped one forefinger up in the shape of a gun and mimed shooting at them.

They loved it. They went absolutely wild, getting up out of their chairs and straining against each other to get closer to me, surging, acting like the world's most fashionable riot.

Even considering I'd likely be dead within 72 hours, this was pretty awesome.

"So tell me, David," Caesar said. "How is life here in the Capitol treating you?"

I made a few flattering comments to the effect that being in the Capitol was mindblowing good fun. Contrary to popular belief, flattery gets you anywhere if you use it properly.

"Not homesick at all?"

I shrugged, raised my hands. "What can I say, Caesar. This place is wonderful, but I just can't wait to see home again."

Caesar winked. "You know how to do that, don't you?"

"One body at a time, am I right?" The crowd roared approval once more.

I hated them. I hated that I needed to pretend to be some testosterone poisoned psycho to have a chance at survival. I hated their blood thirst, when it was perfectly clear none of these wealthy socialites had ever been in a fight in their life. I hated that they cheered me on while I was talking about shedding 23 teenagers' innocent blood.

But what matters more, righteous anger or going home again? I had made that decision backstage.

"Now, David."

"Lay it on me."

He leaned forward to estabish a deep connection. I did the same.

"You scored a seven."

I breathed on my fingernails and buffed them on my yellow shirt. "Yes, I did."

They ate that up.

"Can you give us all a hint as to how a boy like you got such a high score, and really folks, isn't he wonderful?"

The crowd exploded. I waved them down to silence them, and as they calmed down I decided to mess with them a little. I snapped my hand up again, nodding to encourage them to a furor again. I waved my hand up and down like a yo-yo, switching them from utter silence to screaming themselves hoarse at will.

I said, "I can't believe that just happened."

Caesar and everyone else in the room laughed. The lights were a bit less blinding then they were before, but I still wish they could turn them all off. I wondered how Caesar could stand it, being in front of them for years and years...

"Dang, I'm sorry, Caesar. I completely forgot the question."

He said, "How did you got such a relatively high score? I think we're all anxious to know. I know I am." He gave the cameras a significant look that, as far as I could tell, meant nothing.

I laughed. "I'll show you." I paused for dramatic effect. Then I flexed my left bicep and beamed. The shirt had been specifically designed to tighten around the upper arm so as to emphasize the muscle. The audience cheered again, with a lot of shrieks coming from female throats. Caesar pretended to be scared that my bicep might poke him in the face. I laughed with the audience.

In truth, I simply slapped on a pair of black brass knuckles and beat a gel torso for a solid four minutes. Something about the simple brutality appealed to the judges, I guess. I think I heard one of them mention that even the Careers usually couldn't hit something that hard for that long without losing their wind. So I guess the stamina helped too. Still, four others had scored higher.

"David- do you mind if I call you Dave?"

"Absolutely!" I didn't think he got that joke.

"Dave, I just have to ask on behalf of our female viewers- are you taken?"

I smiled and looked out into the crowd. I couldn't see them, but I knew they could see me. "First come, first serve."

The resulting roar overwhelmed us.

Caesar and I exchanged some more small talk, swapping jokes and such, but it was clinched. I'd have material support in the Arena, if I survived the initial massacre.

* * *

I can't read the Torah or the Talmud, but I grew up with the stories. I heard of how Ehud the lefthanded assassinated the Moabite king; of how Moses brought us out of Egypt into the promised land; of how Nehemiah rebuilt the holy Temple; of how my namesake King David slew Goliath; of how the soldiers of Manassa stood against the Romans; of how Tuvia Bielski created a hidden Jewish village in the heartland of the Nazis.

If I win this, then maybe in thousand years they'll tell Jewish kids the story of David Shalum, who delivered the Chosen from their ghetto in Panem. All Victors are showered with money, gifts, and priveleges. If I win, no one in my neighborhood will wonder where their next meal will come from.

This wouldn't be some crummy, half-baked heist like back home. I couldn't afford to spend the proceeds on me, not this time. We must give all we can to keep the poorest among us alive. The Victors of the past 60 Hunger Games hadn't- but I guess it's like my uncle said, this will distinguish me from them.

So far as I am concerned, this isn't just a battle for my life. This is the testing ground that the Lord has given me, to show whether I am a righteous man or a sinner.

May the odds be ever in my favor.


	2. Chapter 2

Arnold Vollock was a tall man with a prosthetic left hand, shoulder length grey hair, and eyes that tended to stare off into the distance when they weren't looking at anything in particular. He got face tattoos every year, to keep up with fashion in the Capitol- they changed every year, but they were all about violence. This year he had a fanged skull on each cheek and a curved dagger between his eyes.

I never got to know Vollock very well. He was pure business in everything concerning me, so I never knew him outside of the mentoring. And during my training, I only saw him lose control once. The year he won was the first year I was old enough to watch the Hunger Games, so I knew him by reputation.

Vollock had never trained for the games like the Killers did, but cunning and brutality came naturally to him. After the initial slaughter at the Cornucopia, he joined with the Killer crew in exchange for safety. The very first night, while his new allies were still flush with victory and the taste of blood, Vollock killed them all. He first bashed his fellow night-guard's head in with a rock, then took that Killer's knife and silently finished off the other four, one by one.

It was the greatest upset in the history of the Hunger Games. Every single Killer, dead within the first five hours. Vollock then proceeded to hunt down the remaining Tributes. By the time the last cannon roared, he had personally killed ten people, two less than the record.

"The thing is," he explained in the interviews afterwards, "all of my allies were expecting a double cross from me eventually- that's the nature of the game. So I decided to hit them so early that they would never think to guard against me. I knew I could take the others, so the Tributes from One, Two, and Four were my priorities going in."

* * *

I had eight major threats that I had to memorize- six Killers and two others that in Vollock's opinion had decent shots at winning. The sum total of available data on them was what Vollock called "the facts of life". The trivia on the opposition that might get me home again.

The main threat now, as with Vollock's game, was the Killer crowd. I watched the videos of their training- how they reduced gel torsos to bloody ruins with a variety of weapons, how they trained for hours a day, and all that sort of thing. It was a morale killer, I'll say that. Vollock warned me that they would be deadly with any weapon, even one outside their expertise. The sword fighter was trained in elementary knife throwing, for example. The boxer could sword fight, the bone breaker could knife fight. They wouldn't have volunteered without knowing something about everything.

"David, you don't pick fights with those guys. The arena is a dangerous place even without the fighting, and the longer the Game lasts, the better your odds get. Let them die off before making your move. You focus on staying alive."

Then there was the other two.

The girl from District Eight had been swinging an axe her whole life, and Vollock reckoned she was up to the challenge. She was physically strong enough to rival the Killers in a straight up fight.

"Most people are not willing to go all out to win. Some are. For the most part, only the ones with real killer instinct have a shot. I had it. The Killers all have it. I believe you have it. And unfortunately, I think she does too."

The other was the guy from District Thirteen, a miner who came straight from the coal mines. He had worked there long enough to put some iron in his arms and spine, but not long enough for the black lung to set in. He was another one who intended to go back home.

"He'll know hammers and pick axes, but really, if he gets his hands on anything heavy at all you be in for a hard time. He's another one who's playing the Game."

I didn't like Arnold Vollock. He was brutal, even for his job. He talked about death and survival like old men back home talked about chess- as a thing of beauty to be studied, mastered, and cherished. He understood how to wrangle sponsors, how to train his Tributes, how to analyze the Tributes. And more than that, he loved every second of it. He took pride in his expertise.

His casual acceptance of the Hunger Games scared me. As did his suggestion that I ignore my fellow Tribute, Lia, right from the start.

"She's weak, David. She's undersized, too young, and isn't up to hurting someone. Some people have it- the will to kill, so to speak. They're the ones who have a chance to go home. She doesn't have it, and that's that. There _is_ something to be said for looking after your District partner- the crowd loves it, gets you a little more good will- but she'll get you killed. If you slow your game down to look after her, you don't go home again. You get me? Ditch her. Leave her to the Killers, and keep yourself in the game."

I hated his voice, especially. It was monotone, contemptuous, like every one around him was an idiot for not grasping what he knew. Vollock made no distinction between evil and good- only between effective and stupid. But as long as he got me home again, I chose not to care.

* * *

I was very glad I was Jewish. Uncle Jeremee had made me memorize so much stuff that my mind was strong enough to hold a lot of info. I memorized the facts of life perfectly, just like I had once memorized passages from the Torah perfectly. For each of the eight threats, I knew their age; their height; their weight; their body fat percentage; their weapons specialities; their training injuries; their techniques. Everything that could be known about the enemy was ground into my brain and I made sure it stayed there.

Now all I had to do was survive long enough for most of that knowledge to become useful. And then, fight well enough for it to become useless.

* * *

There was two weeks between my Reaping and entering the Arena. Vollock refused to waste a second of it.

If I wasn't fostering a memorable image for potential sponsors, I was working out. If I wasn't working out, I was being trained. It wasn't like any training I ever heard of, though.

Every morning, I'd drink three liters of protein slush. I don't know exactly what was in it, but Vollock said it would help me bulk up quickly. It tasted like rusty puke, but I choked it down every morning without fail. I had fought guys bigger than me, and didn't like it very much. I wanted to close the gap between me and the Killers as much as I could. _They'd_ been drinking the slush since childhood.

After I had my protein, I exercised. Running, jumping, obstacle courses, push-ups, sit-ups, sparring in pads. Vollock worked every muscle I had, and they grew noticeably every day. As in, I could literally see the muscles forming as I was watching.

Again, I don't know what they put in that slush. But it worked. I was big and strong and could lift my own weight in kettle bells and hurl them across the room. I wondered what Jon would say if he could see me now. Probably that we'd need to cruise the gentiles' hood and look for some trouble.

I already had some experience with knives, so that's what most of my weapons training was on. My experience was small, admittedly; a gentile kid named Big Erik and I mixed it up about a year back, he with a sharpened screwdriver and me with a dull switchblade. I hadn't done too badly. Big erik put a tiny little hole in my side and a half dozen scrapes on my hands, but I sliced the knuckles on his right open and then stabbed him in the leg hard enough to see bone. I went into training already knowing the two main rules of knife fighting- stab the other guy and don't get hurt.

I also worked with swords and spears and so on, but I show no great aptitude with them.

Also, it wasn't until later, when I was in the Arena, that it occurred to me that I had probably broken kosher. There was no telling what was in the protein slush, but the odds that it conformed to Uncle Jeremee's specifications were slim. Even if it was nothing but kosher ingredients, I had no way of knowing how it was prepared. We'd gone hungry sometimes because something went wrong during the butchering process, and perfectly good meat was sold to our neighbors while we went without dinner.

But what was breaking kosher compared to trying to win the Hunger Games?

* * *

They drugged me hard on my second weekend in the Capitol. Some kind of opiate that left my mind blank and calm, like I was floating on a special bubble of air far above any problem or care. They strapped me in a leather seat with leather straps, in a white marble building on a quiet little street. I wanted to ask them what was happening, but it seemed simpler and nicer just to float. I rubbed my wrists against the leather and thought of how nice the thick belt felt on my skin. The straps weren't tight exactly. I could probably slip out if I wanted to. But it was enough to keep me from wandering away on a whim.

I heard a voice say, "David, watch the screen."

There was a screen in front of me. Just like the screens they broadcast the Games on, but smaller. I hadn't noticed it earlier, I was too busy staring at the straps.

A man appeared on the screen. I stared at him, smiling gently. A second man appeared and smashed his mouth with a hammer. Bloody teeth flew offscreen as the victim recoiled and hunched away from his attacker..

"Whoa," I said. I hadn't expected that. The sound of the jaw cracking was surprising.

A second blow dented the back of his head. When the first man hit the floor, his attacker slammed the hammer down again and again. It was very realistic. The blood splattered up on the assailant's face and light blue shirt.

"What's... I don't... huh..." I could tell something important was happening, but I couldn't bring my thoughts together. I was too calm to gather the energy to find out what it was.

The two men vanished, replaced by a little girl no older than Lia. She was kneeling in a dull yellow fog, coughing hard and fast. Blood drizzled from her lips with each hacking cough. Lumps of pink came up with them. She shuddered and fell on her face hard enough to crack bone. She twisted and convulsed on the ground, trying to scream and failing.

"Poison gas... or... What is this? Hey, Vollock." I meant to shout it, but it came out calm, like I was asking someone to pass the salt of something. What was the matter with me? Oh yeah. I was drugged. I should know, I was there when it happened.

The next image was in black and white, and jumpy. A tall man with a pistol was dressed in a menacing black uniform, similar to the Peacemakers'. A skull adorned his hat, and I thought that it was significant but for the life of me I couldn't think how. He was walking behind a line of skinny women and bearded men who were all on their knees, blindfolded and trembling. As the tall man passed each kneeler, he fired a single shot into the back of the neck. The blindfolded prisoners fell one by one into their graves, which had been dug out beforehand. Unlike the other vids, there was no sound.

I realized seconds after the scene started that each kneeler had a yellow star pinned to their ragged clothes.

Wait, I think I'd heard this story before from Uncle Jeremee. Yellow star, Star of David. Was this the Third Reich? The image wasn't clear enough to make out any swastikas...

"Hey Vollock!" I could feel the drug at work. That's what broke the calmness. Once I could separate the cause from the effect, I was me again. I was me and I had just watched Nazis murder Jews.

"_Vollock_!"

"Fuck's sake," I heard someone say. "Cut the feed, the dose isn't high enough."

"_Vollock!_"

I swung my head left and right, trying to clear it. I thought I could feel the blood slosh against the sides of my skull. I tore my arms from the loose straps.

I heard the door open behind me, and light flooded the room. On the screen, a three young men were beating a fourth with chains and bats. The image faded in the fluorescent light, and then stopped entirely.

"Stupid fucking idea," I heard someone behind me say. Drawling accent, weird inflection at the end of the sentences. Must be Capitol born Footsteps clopped against cold tile. "But hell, who asks me. Not fucking Ludovico, I'll tell you that. Not fucking Vollock. Just 'cause they're Victors, they think I don't know shit. This is some dumb-"

I jerked my ankles out of their straps and flopped forward onto the ground, clawing the floor for purchase to right myself.

"Oh, fuck's sake."

I turned and saw a silhouette in the doorway. It was holding something in his right hand and moving at me.

I kicked him in the balls hard enough to bend my ankle back. As he double up screaming, I punched him in the throat, then hooked a foot behind his ankle and dragged him to the ground. When I felt the impact shudder up through his torso, I got up and stomped the fingers of his right hand until he let go of his weapon. Just because I was angrier and more scared than I was high, I picked up the whole chair (which had to high at least forty pounds of wood and metal) and dropped it on him. It bounced off of his chest and elbows and skittered a few feet away. He turned on his side and tried scrambling away, screaming for help, and I drove my instep into the small of his back.

The guy was crying hard, and I knew I'd won. It takes a lot to reduce a grown guy to tears. I realized that he had been holding a syringe, not a blade, just a few seconds after Capitol guards entered the room.

* * *

I was behind clean grey bars until Vollock gave the okay. And he wasn't letting me out till he had me convinced to go through Ludovico's training again.

"It was wrong, Vollock."

"No. It was not."

"You had no right. No right."

Vollock leaned in close, staring me in the eye. In his grey pupils I saw ten violent deaths, and I looked away first.

He said, "I had every right. Mr. Ludovico and I developed this program last year, to aid our respective Districts. He and I compared notes and found that each Game, those from the outlying Districts _freeze_ when they should _act_. They haven't prepared, you see. Not like the Killers.

"I can teach you all the survival tricks I want. I can give you the knife fighting lessons. I can teach you little survival tricks, and how to play to the crowd, and how to walk quieter. But none of it will matter if you panic the first time you see someone die.

"Mr. Ludovico created the program. My contacts provided the material and financial support. And only Tributes from Districts Three and Eight can use it. It induces a, how do I put it, a mental and physical reaction when you see violence. If someone gets hurt or killed in front of you, you can stay calm and deal with it. If you are in danger, it will keep panic at bay and you'll stay clear minded. This is an edge, David. If you won't use it, then maybe you aren't as committed to winning as I thought."

I glared at him. "No."

"We redo this first course, then just two more after that," he said, ignoring me. "Just three courses and the reaction is set in, permanently. You'll get a leg up even over the Killers. _They_ don't have this kind of training."

"No."

"I refuse to let you lose, David."

"I said no, Vollock. You try to get me in that room again, you better bring an army."

"Fuck you!" he screamed. I jerked back, caught off guard. "None of you stupid little Tributes know how to win. The Killer districts would win every year if I left the Games in your hands, so I don't. For your own good, I sacrifice my time and my energy- my fucking heart!- to try to stack the odds in your favor, and for _what? _To watch you come home in a body bag? To see you blow up before the Hunger Games fucking start because you won't fucking listen to me? Year after year, year after year, you come, and you stuff your greedy little rat faces on Capitol food and Capitol wine, and you bitch about being chosen, and how you couldn't possibly murder anyone, and you die. Every fucking year.

"How many sponsors does your endless fucking bitching get you, huh? How are you going to survive a Killer with a sword and 26% percent more muscle mass than you if you won't fucking train for it?

"Just listen. Listen to me. I'm smarter than you, I survived against the odds, and I know what I'm doing. Just stop being a dumb fuck and just _listen to me_! I know how to get you home if you just... if you just..." He broke off. I was shocked to see tears falling off his face, rolling past the swords on his cheeks and coating his hands as he sobbed hard.

"Just lis- Just listen-" He couldn't finish his sentence, he was crying so hard. Hiccups broke his speech. "Just lis- Please. I can't stand- Just lis-"

I stopped him by slamming an open palm against the bars. "I'm coming home."

He stopped, and gazed at me through red eyes.

"I just beat the shit out of someone I never met before, and if the guards hadn't interrupted I'd have kept going till he died. I did it while high and unarmed. I swear to you I'm coming home. But I'm not going through that again. And that's that."

* * *

We stuck to traditional training after that- the basics Arena fighting and survival training, protein slushies and crowd pandering .

Bu the Tribute from Eight, the axe girl, she went through it. One more fact of life to memorize.


	3. Chapter 3

_When your death is staring you in the face, you see, hear, and feel everything going on inside you. My new boots were comfortable, but left maybe a quarter inch too much room between the toes and the tip. I could wiggle my big toe up and down. My heart was fluttering violently, and if I closed my eyes I thought I could feel it bouncing off the inside of my chest. My hands couldn't hold still, they were shaking against my will. I tried to hold them up and hold them still, but I couldn't. I stuck my hands in my pockets to hide my reactions._

I was stuck in class- Uncle Jeremee's class, not school- when I finally understood what was wrong with the world.

We were studying mathematics, and I was jiggling around the numbers on the paper sullenly, wishing I was out knocking over houses with Jon, when for a single instant my whole existence became a math problem.

Mom brings home money. Call that income X.

We need a certain amount of money flowing out to survive; food and rent and clothes and yada yada. Called that Y.

As long as X is greater than Y, we were doing fine. But if Y got bigger than X, we'd die. Starve and freeze on the streets.

_You never think about what death if like, not until it starts applying to you. I tried to imagine myself dead in a coffin. Still, pale, stiff. My mom and my sister crying on the side. Uncle Jeremee leading the people in a ritual chant of faith and sorrow._

_Nonsense. If I was dead, I wouldn't be seeing them grieve. I wouldn't be seeing anything, not even the backs of my eyelids. I just plain wouldn't be there._

_I can't envision a world that doesn't have me in it._

But most years, Y is bigger than X. I remember when I was kid, like five or six years old, cowering in a corner just outside the kitchen as Mom screamed at no one at all that it wasn't right, it wasn't fair, no matter what she did the ends never meet. She smashed a tea kettle against the front door so hard it put a massive dent in the kettle and splintered off part of the wood. For years afterwards, I would see that chipped door and remember that Mom gets scary when she's upset.

And that was far from the only time I see Mom's nerves get shot because we flat out didn't have enough to get by. Every few months I would catch her breaking down while squaring the accounts.

So how did we survive? I was staring out Uncle Jeremee's kitchen window, lost in my insight, even as he was trying to teach me why the X squared needed to jump over the equal sign. I tuned him out and thought as hard as I ever had.

If we die when Y gets bigger than X, and Y is usually bigger than X, how are we alive?

Well, charity. The families around us who's X's are big enough chip in to save us. Call all forms of charity [Z].

X + Z _is greater than_ Y.

There. Solved it. We survived because people gave all they could to keep us alive. Score one for Uncle Jeremee's teachings.

_Grab the nearest bag, and run. Don't fight the others, they'll beat you. Sprint for the green bag about 100 meters out, and bank left. That should keep me out of the melee. I could see some smaller packs lying along my exit route. Once I take off, I had to stay calm enough to assess my situation. I had to. If there wasn't anyone after me in particular, I had to stay calm enough to grab one or two of them. I couldn't afford to screw this up. Losing is not an option._

But that wasn't right. (Somewhere in the background, Uncle Jeremee was talking about two trains leaving District 3 at different times and speeds.) Because even with the helping hand we've been pawning off stuff as far back as I can remember- family trinkets, baby clothing, used shoe leather, spare machine parts, needles and thread. When our back was against the wall, Mom or I would scour the house for anything that we didn't truly _need_, and see how much we could get for it.

Call everything we pawn [A].

X + Z + A _is greater than_ Y.

That was the only way it made sense. This was reality. This was mathematics made solid and concrete. This is the equation that my life ran on.

But [A] will run out, eventually. Sooner or later our [Y] will be too big and we'll look for something we can liquidate and there won't be enough to sell. On that day, we tip out of balance.

Mom'll never make more money than she does right now. And someday soon, she might make less.

It is inevitable. Mathematics says so. Me and Mom and Ariel out on the streets, praying for a miracle that probably won't happen.

The rich kids' families, they have this equation too, but the variables are all different. Their [X] is massive- the tips of the X reach up in to the sky and threaten passing hovercrafts. Every day, their [A] gets a little bit more bloated and secure as they buy new cars and good clothes and who knows what else.

I'm going to die of exposure and they'll live in comfort, just because I was born poor into a quasi-outlaw sect, and they were born rich and in the shadow of the Capital.

It wasn't right. It wasn't fair. We'd never make ends meet. Even my night time scavenging trips could only delay it. Maybe slowit down long enough that it will hit my kids, or my nephews and nieces. Pass the buck on to the next generation, let them fightto keep off the streets. I realized that that was what my parents and grandparents had done, too.

_I stared out at a city while standing on a landmine, and the skyline was achingly familiar to me. Industrial jungles, backalleys, main thoroughfares. I grew up in a berg just like this one. It had been specially constructed to be the ultimate setting for urban warfare. The Corpucornia lay in the center of the city, in a open space of hard, cracked concrete and barbed wire fences. The shaking in my hands spread my the rest of me as the countdown began._

That night, me and Jon and a two other guys went out into the gentile hood at the docks and beat a preteen kid up so bad I thought we had killed him. We stole his shoes and his shirt and left him crying into his own blood. The kid was small and slim, and just about as poor as we were. After being split four ways, my take couldn't buy a shot of rotgut.

It's not what I wanted. I wanted to go after a rich kid and beat his head in with a claw hammer and steal every penny his daddy had. But like I said, we can't mess with the rich kids. Not without bringing the thunder down on our own families.

But now? Now I got a whole Arena filled with rich kids. And the rich kids' daddies are ordering me on pain of death to attack them and claim the money.

I'm scared.

_I'm not scared. I'm impatient. I'm excited. I am beyond ready to fight. These Killers have trained for this moment for a lifetime, but so did I, in my own way. And my training was a lot more dangerous than theirs._

I'm scared that my mom and my sister and Uncle Jeremee and all of them back home are watching me and see right through me. That they sussed out that I like being here. That I'm glad, now, that I was chosen.

That I get to hunt and hurt the people on the other side of the equation.

* * *

The whistle blew and I flew. All the protein I'd been taken, all the sprinting drills I'd done under Volleck's care, came to me now. I ran like death itself was chasing me.


End file.
